Businesses are growing increasingly dependent on distributed computing environments and wide area computer networks to accomplish critical tasks. Indeed, a wide variety of business applications are deployed across intranet, extranet and Internet connections to effect essential communications with workers, business partners and customers. As the number of users, applications and external traffic increases, however, network congestion forms, impairing business application performance. Enterprise network managers, therefore, are constantly challenged with determining the volume, origin and nature of network traffic to align network resources with business priorities and applications.
A common enterprise network may comprise one or more data centers and a plurality of branch office networks interconnected by public, private and/or leased network communication paths. A data center is a facility used to house computer systems and associated components, such as telecommunications and storage systems. It generally includes redundant or backup power supplies, redundant data communications connections, environmental controls (e.g., air conditioning, fire suppression), and special security devices. Branch office networks typically interconnect to the data centers of an enterprise using virtual private network (VPN) technology, such as VPN servers over the public internet or through Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) VPNs, which use a network infrastructure provided by an Internet Protocol (IP) MPLS/Boarder Gateway Protocol (BGP) based network. In many enterprise network deployments, network traffic associated with branch office networks typically flows through the data center network, which hosts the firewall and other security functions of the enterprise.